I
had a few astonishing thoughts after I wrote my last post. One is that it
was all true, and the second was that
Peggy’s openness to experimentation—and my reaction to it—makes us seem young
and adventurous. The third is that it shows that Peggy and I still have a loving
relationship. Even so...

You might think that people
would adjust to one another after 43-years, yet our life together is often difficult,
although we’re as committed as any couple can be. After all, we’ve survived drugs, 20 years in an open
relationship, two years in a group marriage, me getting busted for shoplifting, and periods when my mental state go pretty bizarre. Yet, I was never for a
moment not committed to her, and I never really imagined that she would leave
me.

As
long as you have faith in your partner’s basic goodness and in her love
for you, you can survive almost anything, and so we have. People can look at various
problems we’ve had and say that, gee, such
and such sure was stupid, or that
must have been hard, or I can’t believe
Peggy put up with you (people are rarely incredulous that I put up with her), yet
here we are, together and in love after 43 years, and how many people can say
that, people who are married to, presumably, normal people, and who are
presumably normal themselves, with both being dedicated to some
theoretically normal life in which they are: monogamous; sane; nominally theistic;
in good health; and have adequate money, 2.3 children, a dog, a cat, a nice
house in the suburbs, and no legal hassles? I would guess that many couples in
long-term marriages have had it easier, but I think there are probably a lot
more who settled for staying together without remaining close. Neither of us could stand that,
and this has forced us to work things out, even when it meant beating our heads
against the same wall for a decade or two.

The
older we get, the more we know other couples who have also been together for a
long time, but I think most of us remember an era when we knew a lot of couples
who divorced. As sad as that was, and as stupid as their behavior sometimes seemed,
I found it interesting, so I actually miss it in a way. The
older I get, the more the drama in my life comes from within in the way of
physical problems and limitations, so I wax nostalgic for those days when I got to witness a lot more of other people’s external dramas and a lot fewer of my internal ones.